Big Tent Nation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit initiative dedicated to substantially increasing the number of citizens working together to address America’s highest stakes economic challenges. Our current political process involves a very small fraction of our citizens and is driven by narrow interests rather than the needs of the nation as a whole. Big Tent will bring the full power of information technology and social networks to bear on increasing mainstream citizen empowerment and furthering broad-based prosperity.

We’re building an online platform that will support diverse, passionate and proactive communities committed to making America economically stronger and more inclusive. These communities will have an unprecedented number of citizens from across the political spectrum working together to put the American Dream within everyone’s reach.

Below are a few of the people involved in this effort to date. They have a wide variety of views about politics and economics, but all agree it’s time to focus on what we have in common rather than what divides us. We’d love to add your name our growing list of citizens committed to economic progress and pragmatic problem solving!

Brian Clancy is our Founder and CEO. Among other career adventures he led the team that launched Fidelity.com and was responsible for systems planning and analysis at the world’s largest investment management organization. He also has a strong social entrepreneurship track record that includes co-founding the Center for Financial Inclusion. The Center has become a global thought leader in microfinance and has partners and funders that include the Gates Foundation, McKinsey, Harvard Business School and the World Bank. He also has experience in the rough and tumble world of city and state politics through his tenure as President of the Boston Public Library Foundation.

Susan Clancy is our CFO. Susan has extensive finance experience in the high tech sector including leadership roles at two internet pioneers – CNET and ZDNet. Among other senior positions she served as the CFO for International Operations at CNET. Susan also has experience with large scale social enterprise initiatives through her role as CFO at Accion International – a global leader in poverty alleviation. She earned her MBA at Harvard and has a BS from Cornell University.

Cathy Fracasse, Program Manager: Cathy has worked with several small software and content companies over the past 10 years, focusing on meeting complex customer needs and identifying opportunities for creativity and growth. Prior to that, her 20 year tenure at Fidelity Investments was marked by the creation and implementation of multiple large scale, mission critical, rules based systems in support of information sharing, compliance monitoring and access control.

Caroline Klibanoff is a digital strategist and a producer of multimedia, content and programming. She heads up Big Tent's digital strategy as well as serving on the Bridge Alliance leadership team. After graduating from Georgetown University, she joined the Pew Research Center's communications team. She has an M.A. from Northeastern University, and has worked for cultural institutions including the FrameWorks Institute, the MIT Museum, Cambridge Historical Society, and Northern Light Productions.

Fresh Tilled Soil, Watertown, MA, UX/UI Design: Big Tent is partnering with this world class UX design firm to ensure our platform leverages best practices related to user engagement and empowerment. Fresh Tilled Soil has done ground breaking work with clients that include Intel, Harvard University, Constant Contact and Credit.com. They built our current prototype and we look forward to realizing the full Big Tent Nation vision together.

Janeiro Digital, Boston, MA, Platform Development: We’re partnering with another nationally recognized technology leader for platform development. Janeiro is helping us define our data model and architecture strategy to ensure we’ve worked through the technical and process flow details necessary to ensure we deliver a scalable, responsive and adaptive platform.

Veracity Media, Washington, DC, Civic Innovation and Community Building: We're currently working with Veracity Media to develop our initial product release. Veracity Media has extensive experience in civic technology and is leveraging the NationBuilder platform to ensure we have a rich and compelling online presence. Our new home will be launched no later than Q2 2017 and will allow us to take a substantial step toward realizing the full Big Tent Nation vision.